Troy MacLarty is looking for a frying pan. It's a Tuesday morning, and The Bollywood Theater owner is making his usual masala omelette breakfast, a thin sheet of spiced egg cooked fast and hot with onion and tomato, forked into an impromptu breakfast sandwich on a pair of the cayenne-stained rolls called pav. Only today, he's not in his usual kitchen.

Instead, he's putting the final touches on Churchgate Station, a new supper club and pop-up venue tucked inside the D Street Village complex next to the big Bollywood Theater on Southeast Division Street. Starting at the end of November, MacLarty will use the brass-accented room to serve set-price meals most Fridays and Saturdays, host visiting chefs and, perhaps, roll out a weekend brunch.

MacLarty finds the pan, makes the eggs, then sits down at Churchgate Station's walnut-lined chef's counter to explain why he needed to expand.

"It's really hard to be creative at Bollywood," MacLarty says. "It's just a machine. It's hard to get away from what's happening. It's just a churning, grinder of a place. People ask me when I'm going to open another Bollywood Theater. I don't have any interest."

Staffing has become a constant headache, MacLarty says, especially for Bollywood's labor intensive food, with most dishes and ingredients made from scratch, including those pav. According to MacLarty, the restaurant makes 160,000 of the rolls each year. "We're as much a bakery as a restaurant," he says.

"I'm really into systems, and to a certain degree, I've worked myself out of Bollywood Theater," MacLarty says. "At this point, the staff kind of need me to be either more in or less in."

Before he ever visited India, MacLarty's love for Indian food started in Berkeley, where he cooked at the influential farm-to-table pioneer Chez Panisse and often ate lunches at Vik's Chaat, the beloved Indian street food restaurant. He moved to Portland in 2005, taking over the kitchen at Naomi Pomeroy and Michael Hebb's Family Supper, then jumping to Lovely Hula Hands when the Ripe restaurant group sunk. The first Bollywood Theater opened on Northeast Alberta Street in 2012.

The new venue is named for the southernmost train station in Mumbai. That Churchgate Station is a handy landmark for guiding taxi drivers back to the nearby Chateau Windsor Hotel, the place MacLarty stays when he visits the city, a friendly hotel with an uncluttered rooftop perfect for sipping chai and eating eggs as the city slowly wakes up.

MacLarty hopes Portland's Churchgate Station gives him a chance to get back to the personal connection with guests he felt at Family Supper. He expects to serve family-style Indian meals to groups of about 40 people, or as many as 60 during the summer, most Fridays and Saturdays, travel permitting.

"I've said many times through the years that Family Supper is where I was my happiest," MacLarty says. "There and Lovely's were where I was in a position to make really special food. There's an intimacy to it. We serve 1,000 people a day at Bollywood. It's not the same."

Though the D Street Village entrance is new, the back area, including a wall the supper club shares with Bollywood Theater, are older, serving as offices for a Nature's grocery store and, later, the Portland headquarters for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Some of the concrete walls have a "cottage cheese" look that MacLarty kept exposed. Others have been painted in a thin graham cracker color. The tiled floors were inspired by India's endangered Irani cafes.

MacLarty will be in the kitchen, cooking menus with themes including Bengali cuisine, Indian breakfast and perhaps a big batch biryani night. Prices will change based on the menu, but MacLarty hopes to keep the supper club's meals around $50 per person to start. A sneak peek at one of Churchgate Station's first menus reveals a lineup of papadum, pickled eggplant, duck braised with apricots and an almond and cardamom cake. MacLarty is particularly excited about incorporating more seasonal produce into his cooking, and about returning to sweets, things he hasn't found as easy to do at Bollywood Theater.

"A lot of modern Indian restaurants have had success with their experimentations," MacLarty said, pointing to the dosa waffles at the since-closed Oakland restaurant Juhu Beach Club. "I've always been really cognizant of Bollywood Theater being food that you could go to India and get, because I'm not from India. If I did that it would stand out in a way that wouldn't be really palatable for people. Here I have room to experiment with the kinds of things that you don't necessarily get in India."

Churchgate Station will open Friday, Nov. 30 at 3150 S.E. Division St., inside the D Street Village building alongside Bollywood Theater's Southeast Portland location. Visit churchgatestationpdx.com for more information and tickets.